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never stay retired. They keep coming back, hoping for miracles, begging for humiliation.
    Couldn’t blame Epps for coming back this time though. Eight and a half million balloons, guaranteed, just to getinto the ring with Walker is nothing to sneeze at. Hey, so what’s a little brain damage? Epps had fought all the top heavyweights back in the seventies—Ali, Holmes, Norton, Frazier, Foreman—and here he was again. Unbelievable. No one thought Epps had a prayer, but there was something about him, something about the way he sat there that made Tozzi believe the guy might still have something. Everything he did—the way he wiped his face with the palm of his big hand, the way he rotated his shiny head like a gun turret to scan the crowd, the way that sly grin stretched across his face and just kept on going—seemed deliberately slow and ominous. The man looked like a Tyrannosaurus rex waking up for a meal.
    Tozzi looked over at Walker on the other side of the podium. He looked like the kind of guy you’d find locked up on Rikers Island, the kind of guy who mumbled and brooded and called everyone “motherfucker,” a bad kid with a lot of attitude and empty eyes. If he had a good side, Walker made sure no one ever saw it. He was twenty-six years old with a twenty-five and oh record, all knockouts but one. A real nasty temper. He made you believe he actually despised every man he’d ever fought and that he genuinely wanted to kill the guy in the ring. The boxing commissions were constantly reprimanding him for the shit he pulled outside the ring—punching out reporters, trashing camera equipment, causing scenes in restaurants, hassling women in bars, shit like that—and the purists had made it plain a long time ago that they’d love to see someone beat the shit out of him and drive him from the ranks. The champ was good with the gloves, though. You couldn’t deny that. He was tough and efficient. He could take a punch and he had a talent for finding the openings. Tozzi zeroed in on the back of Walker’s head where he’d had his nickname shaved into his close-cropped scalp: PAIN.
    Sitting next to Walker was his trainer, Henry Gonsalves. He was the animal trainer, there to keep Walker from going berserk. Gonsalves was an ex-pug himself, and he looked it—flat nose like a glob of Silly Putty pressed to hisface, eyes slightly out of line like an iguana’s, lumpy head, crouched posture, even when he was sitting. But the man had been training fighters for years, and his efforts finally paid off with Walker. Gonsalves was supposedly the only one who had any influence over the champ—some said he had a lot of influence over the champ—and Walker supposedly always called him “the father I never had,” but Walker mumbled and spoke hard-core “ghetto,” so no one was ever sure what the hell he was saying. But on top of being the champ’s trainer and surrogate father, Gonsalves’s other job—some say his primary job—was apologist. He was constantly making excuses for his man, and he had a rap that Tozzi must’ve heard at least a dozen times on TV about how Walker had been abused and confused as a child, how he’d been brought up by the state, how the media have misconstrued him, how he’s basically a good kid trying to work things out for himself, yada-yada-yada . . . Every time Walker fucked up, Henry would get up in front of the cameras and deliver the rap, and most of the time people bought it. People wanted to. Walker was a son of a bitch but he made headlines, and people love to see celebrities self-destruct in public. It makes them feel superior, the way Tozzi figured. That’s what made Walker big box office. If it weren’t for Gonsalves, though, Walker would fade away like a phony-looking, rubber-suit monster in a low-budget horror movie. No one cares about an asshole. But Gonsalves made Walker human and